Among the most enigmatic and intriguing figures of the early Italian Renaissance stands the schoolmaster, statesman, and humanist, Giovanni Conversini da Ravenna (1343-1408) (1). The author of a number of important treatises and dialogues, Conversini's first major work was the Dialogus inter Johannem et Literam written in the early winter of 1378-79 upon the occasion of the elevation of his uncle, the Franciscan prelate and diplomat Tommaso da Frig- nano, to the cardinalate by Pope Urban VI on 18 September 1378 (2). This dialogue cast in the form of a discussion between the author Giovanni and the letter sent to the uncle in exists in two copies. One manuscript is in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. pal. lat. 970, which was no doubt Giovanni's own copy and later belonged to one of his pupils, the Venetian humanist and statesman, Francesco Barbaro (1390-1459), who annotated
(1) On Giovanni Conversini da Ravenna, see the standard life by Remigio Sabbadini, Giovanni da Ravenna, insigne figura d'umanista (1343-1408) (Como, 1924), and the recent surveys by L. Garoan, «II preumanesimo a Vicenza, Treviso e Venezia », in Storia delta cultura veneta. II Trecento (Vicenza, 1976), p. 159-67, and by B. G. Kohl, « Conversini, Giovanni », Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 28 (1983), p. 574-78, with full
(2) A discussion of the dialogue is in the Introduction by B. G. Kohl, to Giovanni Di Conversino da Ravenna, Dragmalogia de Eligibili Vite Génère, éd. H. L. Eakbr (London and Lewisburg, Penn., 1980), p. 18-20. Helen L. Eaker of Rice University, Houston, Texas, is currently completing an edition with English of the dialogue.
